New incentives could boost satisfaction with in-person work, but few employers are making changes

Workers have begun to return to the office in waves, at least for part of the week, and navigating that transition is an ongoing and significant hurdle for employers and workers alike. And many simply cannot fathom a return to the pre-COVID status quo, changing how companies approach their staffing needs. Retaining employees who don’t want to work in person is an issue for companies, but relatively few employers (13%) have introduced new incentives that would make employees more satisfied with it, according to a newly released poll conducted by the National Opinion Research Center (NORC) at the University of Chicago. “Once workers discovered that (remote work could be) less expensive and... make their life a little easier, they just wanted to keep doing it, even once the pandemic began fading away,” Marjorie Connelly, a senior fellow with NORC’s Public Affairs & Media Research department, told The Associated Press. In both the HR survey and a separate poll of U.S. adults, researchers found that the top factors behind employees’ desire to work from home include their prioritization of flexibility and work-life balance. Other HR representatives and employees who work from home cite the length and costs of commuting as key. There are some initiatives that could incentivize more employees to work in person—or at least increase their satisfaction about already going into the office—the poll shows. Most hybrid workers (55%) say paying employees more for their in-office work would provide “a lot” of encouragement for them to work in person more often. Additional pay topped the list across respondents whether they were working in-person, remotely (44%), or in hybrid (50%) roles. However, just 4% of HR representatives whose companies have introduced new policies to get employees back to the workplace say that higher compensation is among them. Employees who are already going into the office—either entirely or part-time—indicated that other incentives such as commuter benefits, in-office childcare, free food, and social gatherings could also add at least “some” more satisfaction with returning to the office. This article was provided by The Associated Press.